


take me out of myself again

by patrokla



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Angst, Multi, post-Season 1, the bleakest timeline...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 01:39:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10843815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: He’d almost forgotten about Curtis.





	take me out of myself again

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably pretty over-the-top sadness, but I finished Part 2 last week and I can't stop thinking about how little Shaolin has left by the end of it.
> 
> Title is, of course, from Michael Kiwanuka's excellent 'Rule the World'.

He’d almost forgotten about Curtis. Not entirely, never completely, but almost.  
  
It had been easy, after a while. Annie had never called him that, just an endless string of ‘baby’ and ‘sugar’ and ‘boy’, ever since she’d taken him in. Cadillac and the rest hadn’t bothered to learn his name until he’d been around too long for them to dismiss him, and by then he’d already left Curtis behind. Grandmaster Flash…if he’d ever known about Curtis, he didn’t say.  
  
To Zeke and the crew, of course, he’d always been Shaolin Fantastic. Almost like Shaolin was a whole person, someone who’d never changed his name, or forgotten it. All they knew about him was his name and the bullshit stories that the artists liked to tell about Shao 007.  
  
That’s what he’d thought, anyway. He’d never expected Zeke to try and tell him what the world thought about him.  
  
_“You know what people say about you?”_  
  
Who the fuck was _people_? More importantly, why the fuck had Zeke listened to them when Shaolin was right there? Living, breathing, and, finally, almost more than a mask. God, when he thinks about the things they could’ve done together, if Zeke had just listened to him-  
  
But that was all in the past. He was living in the present, and in the present, Curtis was gone - for good this time.  
  
Shaolin Fantastic, the Lady-Killing Romantic? Well, he may as well be gone too. What existed now was all that was left when you took away Curtis’s useless innocence and Shao’s useless bravado. It wasn’t much. Not enough to give a name.  
  
Maybe Annie had known the truth of it all along. People like him didn’t need names, not really. He answers to anything she wants to call him, these days. There was a time when he wouldn’t have, but now? Now he’s lost every opportunity he ever had. He knows it, she knows it, the whole fucking Bronx knows it. Zeke doesn’t trust him, the Kiplings hate him, and Annie, well. She doesn’t trust him, but she doesn’t need to, not with the leverage she’s got. Future successors need names, but that’s not him anymore. Tools…tools don’t need names. They just need to be there.  
  
So he is. It’s almost easy now, letting Shaolin Fantastic slip away like Curtis did. Unnecessary, unused, and eventually erased. And if it hurts a little, he can bury the hurt too. Curtis would have cried over it. Shaolin would’ve been angry. But him? He’s not going to be like them. He won’t feel. He’ll forget.


End file.
